Family Complexity, Resources, and the Transition to Adulthood

在过去的40年里，美国的家族组织变得越来越复杂。1970年，85%的人 的孩子与已婚父母一起生活；到2009年，56%的孩子与已婚父母住在一起，没有一步-- 或同父异母的兄弟姐妹1，2其余的人，包括44%的今天的孩子，经历了多种非 传统的家庭安排，可能包括至少有一位父母的住所在孩子的住所之外 家庭，父母改变与新伴侣的结合地位，或包括同父异母或同父异母兄弟姐妹。这 家庭的复杂性产生了一个复杂的、不断演变的基于生物和社会的家庭网络 超越家庭界限的关系。家庭复杂性与儿童接受 来自父母和其他亲属的经济资源减少，对他们早期的福祉产生了影响 生命历程。然而，现有的研究还没有考虑到家庭复杂性的多个维度 同时，它也没有完全解释家庭复杂性的动态性质，也没有完全解释 家庭的复杂性可能解释了它与分配给儿童的资源的联系。因此，研究 关于这种关联的发现是零散的，可能会被错误地指定。我们通过以下方式解决这些限制 将严格的统计方法应用于多代国家研究的数据，以专注于关键阶段 人生历程的一部分：向成年的过渡。特别是，我们问是否以及如何接触到家庭 童年的复杂性塑造了儿童可获得的家庭资源，因为他们开始了一系列 随之而来的密集的生活事件，包括离家、劳动力进入、教育程度和 家庭的形成。我们关注家庭复杂性的三个组成部分：婚姻不稳定，多配偶生育，以及 非居民身份。我们问这些家庭复杂性的维度是如何独立和协调地运作的 在儿童的早期生活过程中，通过 向成人期过渡。我们使用了1968-2015年收入动态小组研究的数据 补充剂将孩子与父母的结合和生育轨迹联系起来 即使儿童与非居民接触很少或根本没有接触，儿童也会在成年后出生 父母。这种设计使我们能够1。)对家庭关系和资源提供新的描述性估计 2)评估在复杂家庭中影响资源分配的因素；3) 将复杂家庭中的时变资源分配措施与向成人网的过渡联系起来 丰富的背景信息和控件集。我们的分析模型改进了对如何展开 儿童影响中家庭复杂性与家庭经济资源的动态关系 通过对时间依赖性的调整来减少估计器中的偏差，使儿童过渡到成年 家庭复杂性和家庭经济资源之间的混淆。我们的家庭复杂性数据库 该项目的构建将作为PSID数据中心的公共发布文件在线提供。

During the last 40 years, family organization in the US has become increasingly complex. In 1970, 85 percent of children lived with both married parents; by 2009, 56 percent resided with both married parents and no step- or half-siblings1,2 The balance, comprising 44 percent of today's children, experience a multiplicity of non- traditional family arrangements that may include having at least one parent's residence outside the child's household, parents' changes in union status with new partners, or the inclusion of step- or half-siblings. This family complexity produces an intricate and evolving network of biologically and socially-based family relationships that transcend household boundaries. Family complexity is associated with children receiving fewer economic resources from parents and other kin, with consequences for their well-being across the early life course. However, existing research has not accounted for the multiple dimensions of family complexity simultaneously; nor has it fully accounted for the dynamic nature of family complexity or for the antecedents to family complexity that might explain its association with resource distribution to children. As a result, research findings about this association are fragmented and potentially misspecified. We address these limitations by applying rigorous statistical methods to data from a multigenerational national study to focus on a critical phase of the life course: the transition to adulthood. In particular, we ask whether and how exposure to family complexity in childhood shapes the family resources available to children as they embark on a sequence of consequential and intensive life events including homeleaving, labor force entry, educational attainment, and family formation. We focus on three components of family complexity: union instability, multipartner fertility, and nonresidential status. We ask how these dimensions of family complexity operate independently and in concert to shape the distribution of available family-based resources over children's early life course through the transition to adulthood. We use data from the 1968-2015 Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its supplements to connect children to mothers' and fathers' union and childbearing trajectories from prior to the child's birth through the transition to adulthood even where children have little or no contact with nonresident parents. This design allows us to 1.) provide new descriptive estimates of family relationships and resources that span households, 2) assess the factors that play into resource allocation in complex families, and 3) connect time-varying measures of resource allocation in complex families to the transition to adulthood net of a rich set of background information and controls. Our analytic models improve estimates of how the unfolding and dynamic relationship between family complexity and family economic resources during childhood impacts children's transition to adulthood by reducing bias in estimators through adjustments for time-dependent confounding between family complexity and family economic resources. The family complexity database we construct from this project will be available online as a public release file at the PSID Data Center.